The HEMP Party hope to win a seat in the WA Senate re-election. Photo: Graham Tidy

"Some people seem to think the HEMP Party is only about industrial hemp or medical marijuana," the party's website states. "Those people are incorrect. We are also about re-legalising recreational cannabis. We would like to see an end to the demonisation of cannabis in every way. And for very good reasons; food, fuel, fibre, medicine and recreation."

The party wants cannabis seed to be available as food and cooking oil and hemp grown under licence for industrial uses, including fibre and building products.

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HEMP emerged around the green, hilly communities of Lismore, Mullumbimby and Nimbin on the NSW north coast, Australia's pot-smoking capital.

The party, founded by Nimbin identity Michael Baulderstone in 1999, was a direct reaction to the tactics of NSW Police who were conducting helicopter raids on marijuana plantations in the area in the late 1990s.

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Graham Askey, HEMP's registered officer, said it was the "heavy-handedness" of police that motivated him to get into politics.

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"They were hovering over people's houses, abseiling down and shooting holes in people's water tanks. We thought we were being invaded," he said.

The party, which claims to number 6000 members in 2014, has contested byelections and general elections in all states - although it missed registration for the 2007 and 2010 federal elections.

For much of its first decade, HEMP's main impact was as a preference feeder for the Greens, helping Greens senator Kerry Nettle get elected in 2001.

But HEMP's relationship with the Greens has steadily soured. Mr Askey said HEMP had been let down by the Greens who promised to call a drug summit in Canberra in return for the party's preferences at the September 2013 federal poll.

HEMP's lead WA candidate Jim Moylan blasted the Greens for walking "both sides of the fence" on cannabis law reform. "The Greens take votes away from us because people just assume they are for cannabis law reform," he told Fairfax Media.

Section 8 of the Greens' federal policy document on "drugs, substance abuse and addiction" states: "The Australian Greens do not support the legalisation of currently illegal drugs."

A strong election result for a so-called micro party like HEMP is a primary vote of about one per cent. It will never be elected on first preferences.

Led by Mr Askey, the party's chief preference negotiator, left wing HEMP has become increasingly pragmatic in its approach, entering deals with major and minor parties on all sides of the political divide.

Fairfax Media revealed earlier this month that Labor had cut a preference deal with HEMP for the Western Australian senate election rerun.

Through the preference-bartering forum of the "minor party alliance", HEMP has also done deals with right wing groups like the Shooters and Fishers Party.

Preference deals are not confined to voting day. Often a party like HEMP can exert influence through its involvement in preference swaps.

It is no coincidence that a 2013 upper-house inquiry in NSW Parliament into the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes was called by Labor and chaired by Shooters MP Robert Brown. The report came back in favour of medicinal marijuana, with even Liberal Party and Nationals members of the committee backing its introduction.

But with Fred Nile sharing the balance of power in NSW there is little likelihood of Premier Barry O'Farrell acting on the committee's unanimous recommendations to trial its use for patients in chronic pain.

With US states like Colorado having legalised marijuana, HEMP's best chance yet to get a candidate into Parliament is in WA on April 5.

Preference deal experts like Glenn Druery, the convenor of the minor party alliance, and the ABC's Antony Green agree that of all the micro parties, HEMP is best placed to rise from obscurity. The Sports Party's Wayne Dropulich, who succeeded in the first count in WA, cannot win again, they say.

If the strife-torn WikiLeaks Party does not poll much higher than the 1.2 per cent it got last time, HEMP is a mathematical chance of taking a seat at the expense of Greens candidate Scott Ludlam or a second ALP senator.

A result of three Liberals, two Labor and one Green remains the most likely result.